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On
THE SONG IN OUR SOUL, THE PALOMAR TRIO
harkens back to the early days of swing music with a trio
recording of tunes that are mostly lesser known but nevertheless
helped to usher in a new era.
The
Palomar Trio comprises some of the top New York-based players who are
aficionados of music from the 1920s and 30s. Saxophonist and
clarinetist DAN LEVINSON has a 35-year career specializing in
traditional jazz and swing music. The 2017 winner of Hot House
Magazine’s “NYC Jazz Fans Decision” award for Best Clarinetist,
he has performed with Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis, Dick Hyman, Bria
Skonberg, Ed Polcer, Howard Alden, Jon-Erik Kellso, and many more
prominent artists. He spearheaded the 2023 release Celebrating
Bix! on Turtle Bay Records.
Pianist
MARK SHANE had an extended tenure as house pianist in New York’s
“Eddie Condon’s” jazz club. A soloist at major jazz festivals
throughout the world, he has toured with the Smithsonian Jazz
Repertory Ensemble under the direction of Bob Wilber and was featured
in the 50th Anniversary Benny Goodman memorial concert at Carnegie
Hall. Among his many accomplishments are playing jazz piano for the
Twyla Tharp Dance Company as well as for the Grammy-Award-winning
soundtrack of the film “The Cotton Club.” Shane also played a Royal
Command performance for HRH Princess Anne at London’s Festival Hall.
For
many years, KEVIN DORN has been one of the busiest drummers in
traditional jazz. Besides playing at numerous jazz festivals and jazz
parties, including the JVC Jazz Festival, he has performed with top
artists like Ken Peplowski, Warren Vaché, Harry Allen, Catherine
Russell, Bob Wilber, Dick Hyman, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Vince Giordano,
among many others. He currently performs regularly with many bands,
including Woody Allen's New Orleans Jazz Band.
The
musicians have been heavily influenced by early jazz legends like
Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, and especially by Benny
Goodman’s trio recordings. In fact, the name of the group is an
homage to Goodman, whose performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los
Angeles in 1935 is considered the beginning of the swing era. It made
Goodman an icon and attracted a wider audience to the music.
Of
course, Goodman is famous for his big band performances, but his
small group work produced groundbreaking records that enjoyed huge
sales and wildly popular live performances. Goodman said of the first
time he performed with Teddy Wilson in a small group at a party,
"That night Teddy and I began to play as though we were thinking
with the same brain." Levinson echoes that sentiment about his
performances with Shane and Dorn, “I often tell people that this is
my desert island group. We have incredible chemistry. We don’t try to
copy performances from the period; rather, we all speak the same
musical language and communicate with one another through it.”
Levinson,
Shane, and Dorn have been playing together off and on for around 23
years. Like most performing artists, the Covid lockdown was very
difficult for them. Although they could not perform before a live
audience, they got together to jam in Shane’s music room in his home
and shared their music on a couple of livestreams. This album came to
fruition when they were approached by Scott Asen, the head and
founder of Turtle Bay Records, to make an album. The label
specializes in showcasing the best contemporary jazz players playing
the best tunes of yesteryear.
The
music on THE SONG IN OUR SOUL comes from tunes the trio
chose to jam on during the lockdown. They had dozens of songs to
choose from and recorded 25 of them. The hard part was whittling it
down to the final 11 that would appear on the album. Rather than
choosing the most well-known tracks, they simply chose the songs they
felt swung the most.
They
open the album with the Fats Waller and Alex Hill composition “Keep a
Song in Your Soul,” which became the basis for the album’s title and
reflects the band’s deep attachment to the music. Four of the tunes
were originally recorded by Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra,
including “Delta Bound,” “Wake Up! Chill’un, Wake Up!,” “El Rado
Scuffle,” and “River, Stay ’Way from My Door.” The Apex Club, where
Noone’s band performed seven nights a week beginning in 1926, was a
popular hangout frequented by jazz musicians including Louis
Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy McPartland, Gene
Krupa, Bud Freeman, Joe Sullivan, and Eddie Condon. Even Maurice
Ravel came to listen to them.
Ozzie
Nelson and His Orchestra performed “Roses in December” for the 1937
film, The Life of the Party. Levinson was inspired to include
it from a live performance that was captured by the Benny Goodman
Trio featuring Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa. Shane re-harmonized “It’s
Been So Long,” which was written by Harold Adamson and Walter
Donaldson for the 1936 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cinematic extravaganza The
Great Ziegfield.
The
remaining tracks were not inspired by prior recordings but are songs
the band likes to play. “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town,” written in
1932, sold over a million records. Coleman Hawkins recorded “The Day
You Came Along” with an all-star band under his own direction in
1933. It was also recorded by Bing Crosby for the 1933 film Too
Much Harmony. “Rompin’ in ‘44” was recorded by clarinetist Edmond
Hall in 1944 for the Blue Note label with his All-Star Quintet
featuring Teddy Wilson, Red Norvo on vibes, and Carl Kress on guitar.
Although
the bass is the link between the rhythmic and melodic elements in a
band, like Goodman’s iconic trios, THE SONG IN OUR SOUL creates
a full, swinging sound without it. Levinson says, “I’ve heard many
pianists try to fill in for the missing bass, but that isn’t the
sound I was looking for. It takes a musician of Shane’s caliber to
create harmonies so full and rich, you don’t notice there is no
bass.” Indeed, it takes musicians of the caliber of Levinson, Shane,
and Dorn to reimagine these songs from another era to create modern,
hip tunes while preserving the zeitgeist of the original music.
# # #
THE
SONG IN OUR SOUL was released on November 17, 2023, on Turtle Bay Records
and is available at Turtlebayrecords.com and all digital platforms.
Online:
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